ALIA Board Blog

Today was a big day - with lots of ALIA announcements all in one day!

No. 1 - The Australian Government through the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) has announced funding of $1 million for the purchase of playback devices for public libraries around the country. This funding also covers the costs of acquisition, distribution, training of library staff and evaluation of the program.  This initiative is the ‛Local Government Increasing Accessibility Library Initiative’ (Library Initiative). The Australian Library and Information Association Ltd (ALIA) has been selected to deliver the Library Initiative.  The Library Initiative aims to improve access for people with print disability to print material in a digital format through public libraries around the country.

This initiative has been nearly a year ‘in the making’ and we are looking forward to working with FaHCSIA and Australian public libraries on this important project.  Our Chief Operating Officer, Rob Miller is co-ordinating the project at this time.  We are keeping our ALIA Public Library Advisory Committee colleagues informed as we go along.  More on the aliaPublic e-list soon, and in aliaNEWS and inCite of course. 

No. 2 - We announced a new ALIA service today - an LIS eBook package for members.  Professional reading is so important for us all, but sometimes our institutions may not have a focus on LIS material, or you may be in a small library service with limited budgets.  This new package goes well with our Proquest LIS Journal package for members.  Now there will be no excuse for not being able to say that you are “well read” on a library topic of your choice.  Not an ALIA Member?  Then now is the time to join to have access to this resource!

No.3 - We announced a key staffing appointment - Our next Education Manager will be Lisa Strickland.  Our accreditation of courses, collaboration with educators and employers and liaison with other peak bodies, like our Industry Skills Council IBSA is a key part of our business.  Even though Lisa has been my Executive Support Officer for awhile, she brought with her many other talents, skills and a background in higher education, and the public and private sectors.  It’s great to see people come into your organisation that can then take on more senior roles.  While I will be looking for a new ESO soon, at least Lisa’s skills will be retained by ALIA in a different role.  Congrats Lisa.

Today we also held a staff farewell morning tea for Robyn Ellard, our Director, Member Services.  Robyn has been with ALIA National Office for 4 1/2 years and during these years has managed our groups, membership, publishing, events and Local Liaison Officer (now our State Managers) teams.  She has spoken with so many members, answered so many of your enquiries, supported the Board and lots of committees, represented the Association at many meetings, functions and activities and has been a familiar face at conferences and events. We wish her all the very best for her new life in Melbourne. 

Another Blue Shield Australia meeting via teleconference today, with lots more interaction and discussion and collaboration between the archives/museums/galleries/library sectors on disaster recovery and ways we can support our members and the community.  The BSA website is gathering consolidated data which will be available next week on affected institutions and sites. 

Tonight, a special treat, with a Skype call with Annie Mauger, Chief Executive of CILIP.  You must have heard that it is proposed to close nearly 400 public libraries in the UK, and it was announced this week that 5th February will be Save Libraries Day.  It is Advocacy in full swing, with each group playing a different role for the combined effort (what Advocacy is all about).  I really like the   What you can do in two minutes, five minutes, thirty minutes idea here.  And the amazingly comprehensive Campaigning Toolkit.  (If Australian Governments ever attempted such an amass of library closures, heaven help them)  If you are a tweeter or blogger then 5th February 2011 is an opportunity for you, no matter where you are in the world, so show that you support UK Libraries and libraries everywhere by telling others about #savelibraries.

Tonight also finished at home with excited talkative girls for a sleepover, special cake, and packing planning for the ALIA Information Online Conference next week in Sydney.

Over to the other side of the world for the next part of today for #libday6 ….

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director    LibraryDayintheLife

http://www.twitter.com/alianational

I have been meaning to blog - really, truly - but I’ve sort of got out of the habit.  I have to say that 2011 has started off so unexpectedly for so many Australians that we have all been abit distracted. I hope to use committing to #libday6 (website here, facebook here, twitter here) to put together a few summaries of some of the things ALIA is doing at the moment, abit of what my ‘day job’ is like, reflections on what I do as Executive Director of the national peak body for libraries in Oz, and why I am *still* a librarian even though it is not my current job title!

I have been watching Library Day in the Life since it’s inception and for the past week have been musing - ‘will I, or won’t I’.  Looking at this next week there is alot on as usual, so I hope my late night writings can do it justice. 

So how was today?  Sometimes I feel abit like that Gary Larson cartoon of always being on the phone  (On the way to work in the car handsfree, at the Office and on the mobile wherever I am)  I had the usual wide range of phone calls today, mostly relating to Disaster Recovery with our Queensland and Victorian colleagues.  If you have not been near the TV lately, a great proportion of Australia has been under water with devastating floods, and we will be recovering for quite awhile.  ALIA has been involved with Blue Shield Australia since 2005 and we undertook an extensive library disaster recovery projects in 2009/10 following the Victorian Bushfires. Check out the current links and resources on the ALIA website.   Our first Disaster Recovery Project Manager, Jane Grace recorded her story of being a librarian in the middle of a major natural disaster.  My calls today and over the past few weeks to people in Ipswich, Toowomba and Brisbane indicate that similar stories of library contributions to their communities are happening again - storytelling at recovery centres, co-ordination of assistance, support, and a safe place to be in the craziness of what else is happening.  We have been starting to get reports and photos in from Victorian library colleagues as well.  Our best wishes to them as the waters finally start to receed.

I also caught up with ALIA President, Graham Black, (Leader of our Board of Directors) on the phone as he is now back in Rockhampton, to have some time to update him on a few things and chat about our itinerary for next week - our biggest conference ALIA Information Online.  Looking at all the meetings, functions and activities we need to be involved in next week, I am glad I have been keeping fit.  It’s a full week, non-stop, but we are all looking forward to seeing so many members in Sydney very soon.

My Publishing Manager and I talked through the ALIA Annual Report that we are starting to write for the 2010 calendar year.  It’s very much a combined effort. 

Part of my job is to connect our profession across the sectors (TAFE, University, School, Public and Special Libraries), and disasters prove that all library sectors face similar issues.  I hope that I can connect more of us together at times like this, to learn from past experience and to create opportunities for us to provide effective (useful) recovery projects for libraries and library staff.  We have around 50 library associations and organisations in Australia and ALIA connects and works with many of them when combined effort is needed.  Tonight I am working on proposals for us to combine efforts, collaborate and connect for what will be the next phase of ALIA’s Disaster Recovery Projects.

Many of you would know your Library Association’s Executive Director or CEO - our job is wide ranging, always full of variety, a privilege and very rewarding.  This week I will probably only talk about a snapshot of all that we might deal with in any one day.

Lets see what interesting things are on the agenda for tomorrow for the next #libday6….

Sue Hutley,  ALIA Executive Director  sue.hutley@alia.org.au

librarydayinthelife

The  floods over the past couple of months or so have been more devastating and tragic than any one of us could have predicted. Up until a day or so ago there were unfortunately a few deaths and the flood damage was largely caused by slowly rising flood waters. The events of the past 24 hours have changed all this with flash floods and the consequent loss of life and property in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley. Its almost unthinkable that Brisbane  is bracing for floods similar to those experienced in  1974.The floods have  and will continue to severely impact the personal, professional and vocational lives of members of many communities in Eastern Australia. The immediate impact of flooding in my own community in Central Queensland is well documented however the longer term impact can only be assessed once the waters recede.  Fellow Board member John Bayliss from Dubbo in the Macquarie region of NSW whose main library was inundated with water is now dealing with the impact of the flooding they experienced in December - unique material lost, material needing to be replaced.Up until yesterday Karen Bonanno, Executive Officer of ASLA reported that about 25 school libraries had been damaged by flooding including Theodore and Condamine who totally lost their school libraries. One of these centres had only recently had a new library built under the BER scheme. I would not be surprised if more libraries aren’t lost or  damaged as a result of the flooding in South East Queensland. This disaster is affecting libraries of all sizes. As I’m writing this, I notice that the State Library of Queensland on Brisbane’s Southbank is closing at 4pm today (11/1) and not reopening until Friday 14 January as a safety measure.So what can or should we do? If you are in local communities affected by the flooding I suggest you seek out local community support initiatives to see how you best contribute. If you are further afield and would like to contribute I recommend making a donation to the Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal (http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html).The floods are having all sorts of impacts of the lives of ordinary people. Just from talking to a few people I’ve heard of people visiting relatives and being stranded, people needing to have emergency medical procedures in centres far from home and being unable to return home, people stranded while on holidays, and others stranded as a result of visiting due to a family bereavement. I’m sure everyone in Queensland and affected parts of NSW knows somebody with a flood related story.   As for me I’m  ’stranded’ at the Sunshine Coast, staying with relatives, working from our Noosa Campus and waiting for the rain to stop and the flood waters to recede. I like everyone else will be pleased when the weather fines up.   Until then however its a case of chin up!        

Graham Black,   President

http://www.abc.net.au/emergency/flood/ - including how to help and donate

http://www.alia.org.au/disasterrecovery

What have you been viewing, reading and listening to this month ?   Here are a just a few on my list for the month of April :

Catching up again on some very interesting TV episodes of Q&A and InSight – with Minister Conroy … and reading the papers and reports from the Cyber-safety Working Group meeting I attended.   Listening again to the ABC Radio Ideas Festival episode in Queensland with lots of familiar ‘library’ voices from around the country.   I am catching up on some professional reading through our new ALIA LIS Journal package. Full-text articles that I have missed having access to (back to a little bit of librarian heaven).  

This month we advertised the part-time contract position of ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager and applications have now closed, which I am now going through.   I am also reading the updates from Jane Grace, currently acting in this position – and she’s doing a great job.  Check out the BACwiki linked from the ALIA Disaster Recovery webpage.   Related meeting documents include starting to finalise the Blue Shield Australia Operational Guidelines and Forward Plan  and MayDay material.

More reading – with the call for submission documents for the Not-for-Profit review and the FOI Legislations review. Hoping that some of our members and colleagues from other Library Associations in Australia will assist us with good quality joint submissions. Speaking of submissions, there are some really interesting one’s that we have received for the ALIA Public Libraries Summit – with the new date being announced as 16 July 2009. Take a look!     There’s also the recent Canberra Times article written by ALIA Government Publications Advisory Committee Chair, Roxanne Missingham.   Guess I should add up these reading points for my ALIA PD Scheme documentation, and see what other things are included in the latest PD postings and the new Institutional member newsletter LIS Management in Focus .  I have been attempting some Web2.0 professional development reading too,  on Twitter in particular.  Thanks to my friends who have suggested some good videos and websites for me to ‘get ready’. 

I looked through the websites and picked out some ALIA & IFLA information and transformed them into Trivia Questions that we all did after-dinner at the 2009 ALIES Conference in beautiful Mt Macedon at the EMA Training Centre. I had forgotten how ‘particular’ librarians are with trivia questions and answers, and will refine the questions much better if I do that again, but it was lots of fun :-)        I’ve been looking through a lot of Association websites recently - especially the 52 or so  library associations and organisations in Australia.   Jan Richards (incoming ALIA President) and I will be contacting all of the Executives of all of these Associations and Organisations in the coming weeks.

Some of the other reports crossing my mouseclicks include the PWC CEO’s Report for 2009 - with the phrase “We’re all in this [the GFC] together” ringing true.

And lastly, my ipod music - what I really can’t do without.  Top 10 to Classical downloaded this month … a good mix to listen to.

I hope that you too have had some interesting reading, viewing and music that has helped you along this month.

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

 Jane Grace has started as Acting ALIA DRPM.  Please get in contact with her with donation enquiries, suggestions and offers of support.  For the background about the position please read the blog post here.

ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager

The ALIA DRPM aims to develop a well coordinated, integrated and effective service system for all libraries and integrated services to provide materials and support to communities affected by natural disasters. In the immediate case we are looking at Victoria and the bushfire know as Black Saturday, and further development will lead to the support of Queensland and the flood affected areas.

The ALIA DRPM will work towards achieving :

• The provision of greater access to services and facilities
• Coordinated approach locally, whole state and nationally

Contact

For further information or inquires please call or email:

Jane Grace (Acting ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager)

Phone: 03 9401 0718

Email jgrace@yprl.vic.gov.au

Further updates on bushfire affected areas and Blue Shield Australia pillar body initiatives can be found at the website

Blue Shield also encourages libraries and other cultural institutions to get involved in May Day on 1st May each year, with more information on the 2009 campaign uploaded soon to the BSA website.  Mark it in your diairies now to dust off your disaster plan and undertake some further disaster preparedness tasks during May.   [ Why not book in another fundraising morning tea for the Bushfire Appeal on 1st May as well ]